


The Adventures of Director D. Shaw

by onward_came_the_meteors



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain Marvel (2019), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Humor, One Shot, POV Deke Shaw, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Ratings: G, Spoilers, Spoilers for Agents of SHIELD Season 7 Finale, Time Skips, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25889317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: “I don't know if the Zephyr can generate enough power to--”“No, but 1983 New York City can, right?”“Uh, yeah, we’d need something like ten thousand megawatts, but someone would have to--“Stay behind and set it up and turn it on, yeah. We have to break up the band.”___Director Deke Shaw of S.H.I.E.L.D., throughout the years.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 110





	The Adventures of Director D. Shaw

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for the finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 7!

_“I don't know if the Zephyr can generate enough power to--”_

_“No, but 1983 New York City can, right?”_

_“Uh, yeah, we’d need something like ten thousand megawatts, but someone would have to--_

_“Stay behind and set it up and turn it on, yeah. We have to break up the band.”_

* * *

Deke Shaw had always been good at landing on his feet. 

He liked to think of himself that way, at least, the sort of go-with-the-flow, easily-adaptable type that had allowed him to survive a couple decades under the Kree, time traveling into the past, building and running his own twenty-first-century tech company, fighting face-attacking aliens in a freaky temple, time traveling even further into the past, and being stranded in an alternate timeline version of the 1980s… twice.

This was round two, and his gift for landing on his feet hadn’t run out yet.

Deke gave his swivel chair another spin, watching the room around him turn into a blur before slowly revolving back to face the door. The door was emblazoned with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo, which only made sense, as this was the newest S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.

And Deke, apparently, was the newest S.H.I.E.L.D. director.

“Um, excuse me, Director? Sir?”

Deke looked up at the voice from the corner; one of the newer recruits, straight out of the Academy. He seemed to be making an effort to stay still, even as he shifted files from hand to hand, creasing his carefully neat uniform. “Yeah?”

The agent held out the files for Deke to take. “I’m supposed to deliver these--and also, you’re wanted on the fifth floor for an important debriefing.” He looked like he was debating on the use of another “sir” or not.

Deke clapped his hands together and stood up out of the chair so fast it was sent on another spin. “Right! Thanks, Coulson.”

The young agent blinked. “You’re… welcome?”

“Oh, am I supposed to call you ‘Phil’ or something? I didn’t think S.H.I.E.L.D. was that casual with the whole first-name thing.” Deke scrutinized the twenty-four-year-old version of Phil Coulson up and down. “Yeah, no, that would be weird. Things were simpler when Mack or the other Coulson were in charge--then it would just be ‘hey you’ or ‘that one’ or ‘Agent Shaw’ if they wanted to get spicy.”

The younger Coulson apparently decided not to comment on any of that. “Uh-huh. So, do you mind--”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I’ll be right there.”

The younger Coulson nodded and left the room, the door shutting very quickly behind him.

Deke started to flip through the files he’d left on his desk--being in charge was a lot of paperwork, and he’d taken one look at what computers looked like in this time period and began mentally calculating how to send a message to the other timeline to get the team to pick him up--mentally sorting them through the parts he could handle himself and the parts that would be delegated to the less-higher-ups. Teamwork made the dream work, after all, even if this wasn’t exactly his old team.

His hand bumped against something hard as he restacked the files on a corner of his desk, and paused. 

It was the director’s nameplate, the name “Deke Shaw” printed in neat letters beside a tiny S.H.I.E.L.D. logo that apparently agents felt like they had to put on everything. Seriously, an eagle was kind of overdone. He could definitely come up with something better.

Deke grinned. He could get used to this.

Another day, another timeline.

* * *

Deke shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun as he stepped out of the car in front of some place called a Blockbuster Video. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he didn’t remember being introduced to it by either his old team or the Deke Squad, and all Sequoia had ever wanted to do was Netflix and chill. 

“Hey, there!” he called out into the bright glare, that slowly faded to reveal a blond-haired woman in a gray and turquoise suit that made Deke instantly think _space._

The woman turned from the phone booth she was examining, her eyes immediately narrowing. “I’m a little busy right now, actually.”

“That’s cool. This’ll just be a quick sec.” When the woman didn’t respond, Deke continued. “Hi, I’m Deke Shaw, Director of the Strategic Homeland… never mind. And you are?”

“Vers. Kree Star Force. And if you could leave me alone so I can get back to tracking down the shapeshifting aliens that will invade your entire planet if left unchecked, that’d be in both our best interests.” The woman punctuated this by starting to walk away, but Deke chased the half step after her.

“Wait, don’t go anywhere! I also do _not_ want my planet invaded again, not when we just got the Internet and a Discman, plus Coulson’s heading his own missions now--I’m kinda proud of him, he was so excited--and either way I’m kind of done with the whole Earth-getting-invaded thing. Especially now that my grandparents are in elementary school, I feel like I have a responsibility, you know?” Deke shook his head, and leaned back against the car door before looking back up to meet Vers’s eyes. “So I’d take any help I can get.”

Vers had stopped narrowing her eyes a while ago and was now watching him with begrudging amusement. “You’re not surprised that I’m from space,” she observed.

Deke laughed. “Nope.”

Vers waited another moment, the wind blowing both of their hair around into their faces. She ignored hers, Deke had to fix his. 

Then, somewhat surprisingly, Vers pulled open the passenger-side door of the car and let herself in. “Then I hope this thing can catch up with Skrulls.”

“Trust me, it can,” Deke said, having absolutely no idea if it could or not. He climbed back in the driver’s seat and started the engine.

As they drove out of the Blockbuster parking lot, he turned to Vers again. “By the way, you’re not one of the _evil_ Kree, are you?”

“Evil Kree?”

* * *

The light in the mansion’s living room flicked on as a man wandered in, wearing a blue shirt that looked like he had slept in it on the car ride home. Its fabric didn’t quite cover the circle-shaped glow coming from his chest.

“JARVIS?” the man asked, seemingly to the empty air. Either that or to the strangely abundant number of modern-art-esque metal lamps placed all around the room.

A robotic voice issued from somewhere in the wall. “Welcome home, sir. You might be interested to know that Colonel Rhodes has left you forty-seven messages in the last hour.”

“What, he couldn’t be bothered to make it a nice, even number?” The man shook his head. “I’ll listen to ‘em later. Anything else I should be interested in?”

“As a matter of fact--”

“Hello!”

Deke stepped out of the shadows behind the luxurious couch--man, it was _really dark_ back there--and did an extremely dignified hop around the coffee table until he was finally face to face with the other man, who had backed up about five steps.

“How did you get in here?” The man demanded. He looked up at the ceiling. “JARVIS, do I need to be worried about my security?”

Deke kept talking. Seriously, he had not hidden behind a couch for three hours just to get interrupted. “You’re him, right? Tony Stark. Or, ha, _Iron Man_ now, I guess. Awesome branding right there. Can I call you that? That’s what it says on all the headlines.”

“I’m gonna ask you again how you got in my house, and after that JARVIS is calling the police.”

“This is so weird,” Deke continued. “I mean, I always heard about you before--people kept comparing me to you, which obviously I’m a humble person but you’ve got to admit that the energy shield prosthetic was--”

“So I’m having trouble figuring out if you’re just delusional or if you have no concept of self-preservation, because you obviously know who I am and it’s not dissuading you in the slightest from breaking and entering into my house.” Tony Stark was staring at him, which ordinarily would have been a fun sentence to say, but in these circumstances it was more of a “are-you-from-an-insane-asylum” stare, which was much more uncool.

Deke nodded, a grin breaking over his face that did not seem to reassure Tony Stark in the slightest. “Ooh, yes, that’s the kind of energy we need! No wonder you were first on the list.”

“And which list would that be? Because there’s a few.”

Deke spread his hands. “Well, the Avengers Initiative, obviously! Now, is there any Zima in here?”

* * *

_Whoo-oo-whoo-oo-whoo-oo. Beep-beep._

Deke shook his hands from where they were starting to cramp around the controller and shook his head sadly at the pixelated red ghost that had just swallowed his Pac-Man. Old age was really killing his reflexes.

A rustling noise was coming from the hospital-like bed behind him and Deke turned around just as its occupant rose into a sitting position, shaking the blanket off his knees and rubbing his head like it hurt.

Well, he supposed the guy did just come off from the world’s most epic brain freeze.

“How’re you doing?” Deke asked, pressing the button to return to the home screen. He was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, a TV stationed at the other end of the room where the console was hooked up. The rest of the room was sparse and empty, plain white walls and floors without a single poster of a lemon. “You woke up quicker than the doctors thought, but I guess that’s one benefit of the super-juice.”

Steve Rogers blinked slowly as he took in the sight before him, his eyes noticeably widening when he spotted the TV screen, which Deke had just loaded up with another round of Pac-Man. “What’s going on? Who are you?”

“Does that matter? I’m in the same room as Captain America.” Deke laughed under his breath. “Man, I wish Sousa were here, he’d have definitely blown one of his old-timey fuse boxes. I used to have some posters of you at my start-up--I didn’t know who you were, but my decor guy said they’d be good for morale--at least until I had to take them down after you became a war criminal or whatever, but I think Trevor still kept some in the back.”

Steve Rogers frowned and slid out of bed, walking right up to the door before he stopped and looked back at Deke. “I don’t know if you think this is funny, but I’ve got people I need to get back to, so--”

“Right. About that, there’s something you should know.” Deke winced as the pink ghost blinked closer and closer to his little yellow mouth. “No, no, Pinky, just a few more--aaagh.”

“I think you’d have an easier time answering me if you would put down that--that--what the hell is that thing?”

“Huh. You’re a lot angrier than Danny-boy was. Maybe it’s the trauma. You know, S.H.I.E.L.D. has a counseling department now--”

Steve Rogers reached for the doorknob.

“Okay, I’m not actually supposed to let you leave.” Deke paused the game and started to stand up.

“Then I guess you’ll have some explaining to do.”

“No, for real, the doctors already didn’t want me to have this in here--” Deke gestured to the screen and the console. “--they wanted to break it to you slowly, but since I’m the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., I can do what I want, and I thought this would be a better way to establish some mutual trust.” He offered a smile that Steve Rogers did not return.

“And are you going to tell me what S.H.I.E.L.D. is?” Steve Rogers asked.

“Uh, you’d know it as the S.S.R. But different, obviously. We try to keep constant growth and evolvement as a priority to better adapt to the ever-changing world we live in, _and_ we have these.” Deke grinned as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, from which “Don’t You Forget About Me” by The Deke Squad was playing. “Pretty sweet, right?”

Slowly, Steve Rogers’s hand tightened on the doorknob.

* * *

“So I show up, and the cube is glowing. That’s not good, right?”

“Again, Director, it’s called the Tesseract, and it usually emits a low level of ‘glowing,’ but it’s been giving off spontaneous energy surges for the past four hours.”

“Not good, then. Should we evacuate? We should probably evacuate. Everybody evacuate!”

“Yes, Director Shaw, but Agent Barton made an observation that you might want to hear.”

“Is it that the Tesseract is really a portal into space? Because I thought that was kind of a given.”

“I--”

“No, trust me, I deal with these kinds of things all the time--in fact I actually did sacrifice myself for a magic space portal once, and since I’m _not_ doing that again, we should definitely all evacuate. Like, _now_.”

“Wait, what’s happening?”

“Everyone get back!”

“Get back and get down!”

“...”

“...”

“Wow, that _is_ a neat spear you’ve got there.”

* * *

Deke gazed around the room. Well, it wasn’t so much a _room_ as it was the command center of the helicarrier. “Is this everyone?”

Four faces stared back at him from where they were seated around the main table. He was _pretty_ sure they were the right people--honestly, the first time he’d been to this century, it seemed like no one could keep track of who exactly was an Avenger and who wasn’t. 

Tony Stark finally broke the silence. “Everyone? Are we waiting for somebody?”

“Nah, this is good,” Deke decided. “The arrow guy’s off being mind-controlled and the cape dude is still in space--and Daisy would still be a hacker without Terrigenesis even if she was born in this timeline, but she's not and that sucks, so Plan A it is!”

“I think I’d feel better about Plan A if you actually seemed to have a plan.” That was Steve Rogers, who was sitting on his left and wearing a ridiculous outfit instead of the plain T-shirt he’d had when he’d first woken up from the ice. Deke knew it was supposed to be a flag, but he was still a little fuzzy on the “separate countries” thing as opposed to “humans, aliens, or robots.”

“I do have a plan.” Deke took a sip of the lemonade in the glass in front of him. “We’re just waiting for the right time.”

“Well, the right time better be soon, or I’ll start feeling like I shouldn’t have packed so quickly,” the man on Steve Rogers’s other side muttered. He was nowhere near as recognizable as the other three in his glasses and purple shirt; Deke was just taking his word for it that he was the Hulk.

“Do you have Loki’s location or not?” asked the woman on the other side of the table. Deke knew who she was--she was one of their best agents, after all--but he’d never spoken to her in person before. The thing was, when you sent Natasha Romanoff to get a job done, you didn’t need to be there to give her instructions.

“Yes. We _will_. Soon. Ish.”

Tony Stark looked up abruptly. “Are you sure you should be in charge here? Because me personally, I feel like when a shadowy government organization shows up at my tower and tells me it’s world-saving time, they should maybe know what they’re doing before sending in the alien-killing _squad_.” He lingered on the last word just enough for Deke’s mouth to quirk into a grin that maybe he was only imagining Tony Stark returning.

Bruce Banner raised his eyebrows. “We’re killing Loki now?”

“That was a hyperbole.”

“And it was rude,” Deke interjected, taking another sip. The lemonade was sweet and bubbly. “I can count to eleven now.”

Steve Rogers slumped forward on the table and braced his head against his hands.

Deke finished the lemonade. “ _And_ I’ve already gotten rid of Hydra for you, which not to brag is gonna save you all a lot of trouble. Not that I’m looking for a thank you or anything.”

“If you’re talking about getting rid of Hydra, I think he should be the one getting thanked,” Natasha Romanoff pointed out, jerking her head in the direction of Steve Rogers, who looked at her in surprise.

Deke couldn’t help it when he burst out laughing. His was the only sound in the room for a long moment.

“All right, stop that before you make Captain America cry,” Tony Stark finally interrupted. “I’m pretty sure that’s a capital offense somewhere, and I don’t think we need more problems.”

Steve Rogers raised his head to glare at Tony Stark. “You know what, Stark--”

At that moment, Agent Coulson hurried into the room, his eyes widening as he saw the Avengers gathered around the table, but turning to talk to Deke first. “I hope I’m not interrupting--”

“What is it?” Natasha Romanoff leaned forward in her seat, the picture of intensity. Deke suddenly understood all the comparisons between her and May.

“Please be good news,” Deke added.

Coulson shrugged. “You could look at it that way. Loki’s in Germany. We tracked him down using facial recognition and we can have agents there--or Avengers--in almost no time.”

“New favorite agent!” Deke cheered, standing up from his chair. “At least until Nana and Bobo leave the labs and get into the field. But what are we waiting for? Let’s rock and roll!”

He paused.

“And, ah, Phil? Once these guys do their thing and bring back Loki, maybe keep your distance.”

* * *

Deke squinted up at the sky. “So is he _supposed_ to be flying through that wormhole or--?”

“Director, Stark is most likely dead.” The agent beside him tore her eyes away from the screen to look at Deke expectantly.

He sighed heavily. “Okay, Deke. It’s dazzle time.”

* * *

It was New York City again, somehow managing to be just as chaotic in 2018 as it had been in 2012… and in quite a few other time periods as well. People were screaming and running through the streets as cars crashed into each other and a plane spun its way through a skyscraper, leaving destruction behind.

Deke had to stop the car when the one in front of him suddenly veered into the curb. He jumped out, followed quickly by Agents Nick Fury and Maria Hill.

He spotted Fury fiddling with something in his hands. “What are you doing? Calling for help? Please say calling for help.”

“How can you call for help when no one seems to know what’s going on?” Hill said under her breath, her attention caught at the sound of someone shrieking from across the street. “Hold on, I’ll be right back--”

“I’m paging Carol,” Fury said just as Hill darted away. “I know this was a last resort, but--”

“No, no, do it,” Deke said. He looked around. Did the streets seem emptier than before? Maybe people had just stopped screaming. “As director of S.H.I.E.L.D., I officially declare this _freaking the hell out_ worthy.”

Fury was about to say something else, but then he stopped, staring down at his hand. Deke followed his gaze and gasped when he saw that the agent’s sleeve now held nothing but dust.

He turned to look at him with his one eye, and the pager hit the street as his face crumbled into nothing. “Motherf--”

Deke stumbled back. He was alone now, and it suddenly seemed very cold here in the middle of New York.

“This is so not radical, Alexa play--”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
